Hi,
I was cosidering upgrading my 8 year old Sony KP-53HS10 for a newer 65" DLP set.

I went to Best Buy for an initial now-what's-out-there reconnaissance tour. I went to the Magnolia section and, although I know that display sets are badly setup, I was very dissapointed at the image quality of the std-definition DirecTV source. It had a lot of noise and looked much worse than my current Sony 53HS10. I toyed around and switched to many different DTV channels and all looked really really bad compared to my current Sony

I know, the Hi-def DVD image displayed by most of these new sets is outstanding, but currently 80% or more of my family viewing comes from std-def DirecTV (I also know that DTV is going to expand its Hi-Def channel line-up soon, but that is beside the point of this thread).

I'd appreciate your comments on this. Does std-def DTV really looks worse on the new fixed pixel TV's, particularly on 65" DLP's?

Thank you very much for whatever you have to say on the subject.

Hi,
I was cosidering upgrading my 8 year old Sony KP-53HS10 for a newer 65" DLP set.

I went to Best Buy for an initial now-what's-out-there reconnaissance tour. I went to the Magnolia section and, although I know that display sets are badly setup, I was very dissapointed at the image quality of the std-definition DirecTV source. It had a lot of noise and looked much worse than my current Sony 53HS10. I toyed around and switched to many different DTV channels and all looked really really bad compared to my current Sony

I know, the Hi-def DVD image displayed by most of these new sets is outstanding, but currently 80% or more of my family viewing comes from std-def DirecTV (I also know that DTV is going to expand its Hi-Def channel line-up soon, but that is beside the point of this thread).just as good (if not better ) than my 5 year old CRT Sony!!

I'd appreciate your comments on this. Does std-def DTV really looks worse on the new fixed pixel TV's, particularly on 65" DLP's?

Thank you very much for whatever you have to say on the subject.

I have the Mit 65734 and 65833 and SD channels are very good(some better than others) wife and kids watch them all the time ,no problem, of course the signal you pick up and program your watching will have some to do with this,but like i said ,both tv's do a very good job with SD!

You know, I really wish HD tv manufacturers would just make a mode on new tv's where a 480i/p signal is actually only shown on a small part of the screen with the correct # lines of resolution. Sure, the picture would be miniscule, but at least we wouldn't get all these complaints comparing old tv's with new ones on SD material.

SD = 640x480
HD = 1920x1080

When you take a really small picture (640x480) and blow it up to a much bigger size (1920x1080), it will always look worse.

I'm really just trying to say, the problem isn't the TV's, its the unfortunate transitional period for broadcast TV. It should be frustrating for everyone, but I personally feel the frustration should be vented towards the broadcasters who are too slow to adopt HD standards. Down-res'ing HD to a standard TV will look good. Up-res'ing SD to an HD TV will pretty much always be bad (at least compared to watching SD on an SD tv).

Well your soruce components and broadcast quality are paramount in just how these will look.

I really have to give Dish and the HD VIP211 box some credit here. SD is handled and presented very well on the system. Upconverted SD stuff from major boradcast networks over their HDTV feeds is also very good in most markets.

I have the 65H83 and SD channels are very good(some better than others) and watch them all the time, no problem, of course the signal you pick up and program your watching will have some to do with this.

Thanks all for your replies, I do appreciate the time you took to answer.


As I said, I currently have a Sony 53HS10 which is an HDTV, albeit 1080i. It upconverts 480i signals to 960i and it does (comparatively speaking) a very good job at it.

Indeed there are some channels that look better than others when you compare them on the same set, but the issue here is comparing same channel on two different sets (my Sony and the new Mitsubishi's)

I compared my 5 most watched channels on the showroom Mits and all of them looked worse compared to what I see at home.

Could it be that the scaler on newer sets do a worse job at upconverting SD than older models' scalers?

Would an external scaler improve this on the newer TV's?

You are absolutly correct when a SD 480i program has to upscaled to view on a 720p or 1080p digial technology TV the additional pixels requried have to be invented by the TV and the quality of this invention can be very poor depending on the quality of video procesing chips in the TV. in any case when over 1/2 of the pixels for a 720p TV or over 3/4 of the pixels for a 1080p TV have to be inventied the resulting video ting can be very grandulated or very washed out.
HDTVs only look best when used with HD programs. Older CRT TVs almost always handle 480i programs better.
Some of the networks have much better upscaling video processors for the upgrading of programs filmed with "SD" cameras than others four use on their "HD" channels.

Huh? No expert on DTV here, but I thought there was more to this than scaling issues. DTV is digitally converted SD. I watch digital OTA from my UHF and the digital stations are, in many instances, simply digitized SD/analog material. I flip over to my DTV box to watch those same local stations and they are all much more washed out. Pathetic, actually. And that's the feed I'm paying for. My brief experience with DTV is that it looks as bad, or worse, than full analog. Isn't it compressed before all the scaling, anyway?

Sorry to dredge old threads. I'm trying to establish if my experience is common among DTV users who also have top flight OTA reception. The installer thought I was picky. Then, I simply flipped back and forth from OTA and DTV.

DirectTV serves up some of the worst SD there is. I'm not realy high on their HD either for that matter.

Not sure what else there is to say about this.